**Diamond Dallas Page was announced Monday as being the 2013 recipient of the The National Wrestling Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum's Frank Gotch Award at the 2013 George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame weekend. (Phew, quite a mouthful.) The Frank Gotch Award is given to a professional wrestler who brings positive recognition to professional wrestling through work outside the ring. The inductions ceremony takes place July 12-13 in Waterloo, Iowa, and earlier this fall, it was announced that Ric Flair and "Cowboy" Bill Watts are the living inductees to the Tragos/Thesz HOF, and that Chris Taylor is the posthumous inductee.

**The Rock posted on Twitter confirming he will be at WrestleMania next year. The timing is really tough as the G.I. Joe movie he stars in was originally scheduled to come out this past summer and was pushed back to the week before ‘Mania and will be doing a ton of media all over in preparation for that one.

**The first preliminary estimate for the WWE Hell in a Cell pay-per-view has it pegged at 200,000 buys worldwide for the show headlined by CM Punk Vs Ryback for the WWE Title. This is up from last year’s number of 182,000 buys.

**Vince McMahon is flying to the Middle East along with R-Truth, The Miz, Eve Torres and Layla to visit with the troops with footage to air on the annual Tribute to the Troops special next month.

**Mick Foley has shot down any rumours he will be having a singles match with CM Punk, which at one time was discussed for the TLC event in Brooklyn. It’s clear from television that is not a direction they are going in.

**New Japan Pro Wrestling will present the finals of their tag tournament on December 2nd on iPPV on Ustream and runs from Nagoya, Japan. The company has drawn very well on PPV in Japan with their last two shows doing over 50,000 buys within the country but virtually nothing online with less than 1,000 buys for both. They will also run the big January 4th Tokyo Dome show, which should do their biggest numbers to date.

**Here is the updated card for the TNA Final Resolution pay-per-view on December 9th in Orlando: *Jeff Hardy Vs Bobby Roode for the TNA Title *A.J. Styles Vs Christopher Daniels *Tara Vs Mickie James for the Knockout’s Title

**The WWE will be releasing a “Top 100 Raw Moments” DVD and Blu Ray on December 11th. The list is already out and it’s rather amusing to see that of the Top 30 moments only four of them are from the past five-years.

**Here is TNA’s monthly Before the Bell special looking ahead to Final Resolution on December 8th headlined by Jeff Hardy Vs Bobby Roode for the TNA Title:

**Lance Storm and Jerry Lynn will have one final match together on February 6th next year in Rahway, New Jersey for Pro Wrestling Syndicate as Lynn winds down his career with a final match set for March 2013. Storm and Lynn had a very well remembered opening match at ECW’s Anarchy Rulz event in September of 1999 and tagged together on a show in 2010.

TNA is going to San Antonio, Texas, for the first time, with the Lockdown PPV, on March 10, 2013. The show will be at the Alamodome, which seats 65,000 for football.

Kevin Nash will be at the WWE NXT TV taping at Full Sail University in Florida on December 6th.

**Lex Luger's autobiography will be called Wrestling with the Devil: The True Story of a World Champion Professional Wrestler - His Reign, Ruin, and Redemption and is expected out in April 2013 from Tyndale Momentum. John D. Hollis is co-writing with Luger.

**The WWE was the first to post on thurs that Freebird Buddy Roberts (Dale Hey) had died at the age of 65. Roberts will most often be associated for his role alongside Terry Gordy and Michael Hayes as a member of the Fabulous Freebirds but had a tremendous run earlier in his career alongside Jerry Brown as the original Hollywood Blonds. As part of the Blondes they had a big run in Canada working for Grand Prix Wrestling out of Montreal where they were managed by Sir Oliver Humperdink. Roberts was so closely associated with Canada that when the Freebirds had their very short run in the WWF in 1984 they used his background as part of their first promo on Maple Leaf Wrestling with Billy Red Lyons.

The Freebirds were a concept that came about in the Mid South Territory where Bill Watts was very high on Terry Gordy as a big man, Hayes was the talker and Roberts was utilized as the veteran that could carry the matches and watch over these two young talents. They had big runs in Mid South and for Georgia Championship Wrestling before hitting their drawing peak in Texas for World Class Championship Wrestling and their legendary program with the Von Erich family. The angle that kicked the territory into the next gear came on Christmas Night 1982 when Ric Flair defeated Kerry Von Erich in a Steel Cage Match with the fans voting babyface Michael Hayes as the special referee and led to Hayes turning on Von Erich and smashing the door on his head (a spot that has been repeated many times over the past 30-years). Even with booker Gary Hart leaving the promotion following this show, the angle was so red hot that the territory exploded.

Roberts battled throat cancer after retiring and underwent surgery where a hole was placed in his throat and gave him an extremely raspy voice and struggled for years with his voice.

**WWE.com is introducing a new digital show entitled “The JBL Show” where JBL and Michael Cole will go to different locations each week and have guests join them. The first episode will feature John Cena and AJ on the show.

**Here is the updated line up for Ring of Honor’s Final Battle event on December 16th at 2pm EST and airing at ROHwrestling.com from Manhattan, New York: *Kevin Steen Vs El Generico in a Ladder War for the ROH Title *Steve Corino & Jimmy Jacobs Vs The Briscoe Brothers Vs Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander for the Tag Titles *Adam Cole Vs Matt Hardy in a non-title match *Michael Elgin Vs Roderick Strong *Shelton Benjamin & Charlie Haas Vs Rhett Titus & B.J. Whitmer in a Street Fight *Jay Lethal Vs Rhino *Jerry Lynn in his final ROH match

**Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Jim Cornette is taking a sabbatical from Ring of Honor for an indefinite period of time. Cornette apparently had a major blow up backstage at the recent television tapings in Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania without any specifics for the blow up provided. Hunter Johnston will be taking over the remaining duties that Cornette was carrying out in regards to the production of the show. It was back in October that Cornette was removed as booker for the group but was still in charge of the production of the shows. Cornette will not be attending Final Battle on December 16th in Manhattan.

**There is a rather amusing article today on WWE.com looking at the greatest invasions in pro wrestling history. When discussing the infamous 2001 invasion it reads “William Shakespeare himself couldn’t have written the familial crisis that befell the McMahon family in spring 2001 when Shane McMahon purchased the folding WCW from under his father’s nose, robbing The Chairman of what should have been the crowning victory of the Monday Night War.” Unfortunately Shakespeare was not available that summer and what could have been the biggest storyline in wrestling history...was not. http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2012-11-26 ... s-26072218

**The WWE Attitude Era DVD / Blu Ray is out today featuring a one-hour documentary on the 1997-2001 period. It features a lot of stock interviews in addition to some new chats that were filmed for the special. There is one clip from Vince Russo in the documentary as he was recently brought in to Stamford for the N.W.O. DVD and evidently decided to use a clip for this piece. The documentary doesn’t try and sugar coat what they did during that time period and discuss just about every outrageous angle including Mae Young giving birth, Mark Henry with the transvestite, Val Venis having his penis chopped off, encouraging women to flash in the crowd, Miss Kitty flashing at a pay-per-view (hey, didn’t the WWE say she acted on her own when that happened?) and all of the DX vignettes. I thought the person that comes across the best on the piece is Mick Foley, who noted the positive and negative of what they did at the time, was an unbiased voice when it came to the actual lawsuit with the Parents Television Council (and Foley wrote and researched extensively about the PTC in his 2001 “Foley is Good” book) and acknowledged that the company pushed the envelope for the sake of doing so at times and it hurt them more than helped in a few occasions. If there is one big take away it’s the fact that the product was stale and hurting in 1996 and rather than keep the wheels moving they decided to revamp everything about Raw from the look of the show, the staging, the tone of the characters and evolve and the result was a lot of key characters clicking in unison with one another and it worked. Today Raw is largely put together and feels the same way it did a decade ago with little evolution made to the product other than tacking on another hour to the show. This is not an argument to go the TV-14 route but rather evolving the product to make it feel fresh again and reassessing how the WWE presents their product in 2012.

**Pro Wrestling NOAH has a show at Sumo Hall early Sunday morning and will feature a speech from Kenta Kobashi, which could be the announcement of his retirement. It was reported earlier this week by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that NOAH was not going to re-sign Kobashi because of their financial situation and led to a big protest with many key names in the company refusing to stay with the company if Kobashi was not retained. Kobashi was the key figure in building the promotion after leaving All Japan with the majority of the roster in mid-2000 and it was his March 2003 match with Mitsuharu Misawa where he won the GHC Title that led to their strongest business and one of the greatest title runs in Japanese history. Kobashi has been protected and moved down the card significantly over the past year few years with his litany of injuries and battles with cancer.

**The Raw crew is in Newark, New Jersey on Monday night with CM Punk scheduled to be at the tapings and Vince McMahon also likely to be on the show for the TLC “go home” show. The Smackdown crew tapes their TV on Tuesday night in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

**James Storm could be on the sidelines for a bit after tearing the cartilage in his knee on Impact Thursday night during the six-man tag main event.

**Jerry Lynn has announced that his retirement match will be March 23rd next year and is the 25th anniversary of his debut match in 1988. Lynn will be working the ROH Final Battle card next Saturday in Manhattan and also has a match scheduled with Lance Storm for Pro Wrestling Syndicate next February.

**Another day, another Ric Flair divorce. TMZ.com has the details of the separation of Jacqueline Beems Fliehr and Slick Ric. Check out the TMZ story.

**Tony Mamaluke announced his retirement from pro wrestling.

**Tonight Raw is in Philadelphia for the Slammy Awards show featuring awards being given out all night through fan voting on the WWE app. The following categories have been announced for the show tonight: *Superstar of the Year *Newcomer of the Year *Hash Tag of the Year *Comeback of the Year *Kiss of the Year *Most Shocking Moment *LOL Moment of the Year *Match of the Year

**During the YouTube pre-show before TLC they handed out the WWE.com Slammy Awards with the following winners announced: *YouTube Show of the Year – Z! True Long Island Story *Feat of Strength of the Year – Sheamus giving White Noise to Big Show *Best Dancer of the Year – Brodus Clay *Top Social Media Ambassador – Charlie Sheen *Tweet of the Year – Daniel Bryan *Insult of the Year – John Cena to Dolph Ziggler and Vickie Guerrero *Facial Hair of the Year – Daniel Bryan *Betrayal of the Year – Big Show knocks out John Cena at No Way Out *Crowd Chant of the Year – “Feed Me More” *WWE.com Exclusive Video of the Year – Jerry Lawler flies home to Memphis *Upset of the Year – Daniel Bryan defeats Mark Henry and Big Show at Royal Rumble *Diva of the Year – AJ

**Neilsen has announced an exclusive agreement with Twitter to create a Neilsen Twitter TV Rating based on the reach and online social activity attached to a specific show. The plan is to have this system in place for the start of the 2013 fall season. The WWE has a massive social media following and would likely do favorably in this ratings system but their social media has yet to yield a noticeable return on television numbers and other areas of business.

**TLC was a great show highlighted by The Shield Vs Ryback & Daniel Bryan & Kane in the TLC Match and the Ladder Match between Dolph Ziggler and John Cena. The TLC Match was put on in the middle of the show everyone performed well with Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns made to look like main event stars and pinning Daniel Bryan clean. The match never dragged and everyone had their working shoes on and was a strong lesson in having the right guys for a spot, pushing them and protecting them and after four-weeks you have a main event act. The crowd is Brooklyn took this show to another level and hot all night long and climaxed for the main event with Ziggler and Cena where the heat was off the charts all throughout the match. The decision to put Ziggler over in the main event was a huge step forward for his character and is a clear sign that the WWE is serious about creating new stars on top.

**R-Truth posted a nasty picture of his knee being scrapped very badly following his match with Antonio Cesaro last night at TLC. It’s unknown where the injury occurred but the picture looked horrible.

**JTG defeated David Otunga in a dark match prior to TLC last night.

**The WWE is in Pittsburgh tomorrow night for a live commercial free edition of Smackdown that will air on SyFy as part of WWE week. They are going to tape next week’s edition of Smackdown on Wednesday night in Rochester, New York\.

**The scariest injury from yesterday was to BJ Whitmer, who took a suplex from Charlie Haas off the top rope and was planning to go through a table, which was too far out from the corner and Whitmer ended up rotating in mid-air and landing head first through the table and was immediately pinned by Haas to end the match. Whitmer remained in the ring for a number of minutes and eventually was helped to the back and was described as having his eyes glazed as he was helped and it was a bad scene. He is believed to have suffered a stinger but was okay afterwards and was on Twitter Sunday night.

**Ring of Honor’s next iPPV will be Saturday March 2nd in Chicago Ridge, Illinois at the Frontier Fieldhouse for their 11th Anniversary show. The company has the rest of the year off and return on January 5th in Baltimore for the next set of television tapings.

**It was on this date in 2000 that the final WCW Starrcade event took place from Washington, D.C. headlined by Scott Steiner retaining the WCW Title over Sid Vicious. The company was in severe cost cutting mode at this time and what was at one time their big show of the year went out with a whimper. If you were a fan of WCW at this point in time it was a real sad event not so much for what was on the event but comparing it to years past and Starrcade had lost a lot of its luster (as had the promotion itself).

**Randy Orton is currently on the sidelines with a separated shoulder and not a wrist injury as we originally wrote. The injury occurred at the Tribute to the Troops event last weekend in Norfolk, Virginia and he is expected to be back in time for the post-Christmas house shows, which are one of the most lucrative weeks of the year as the houses are always very strong in the Northeast.

**Entertainment Weekly’s website has included WWE’s Monday Night Raw on its list "10 Old Shows that Still Kick Ass." EW predicts that the show won’t "tap out" any time soon, noting that it averages approximately 4.7 million viewers, putting it near or atop the cable TV ratings each week. Other shows on the list include Survivor, South Park, CSI, and Saturday Night Live.

**CM Punk Vs Ryback will happen on television on the January 7th edition of Raw in a TLC Match from Tampa, Florida. This is also the same night The Rock is scheduled to be at the show and presumably will go off the air with CM Punk Vs The Rock all set for the Royal Rumble on January 27th.

**WWE Raw on Monday night did a 2.89 rating and averaged 4,230,000 viewers for the Slammy Awards off of hours of 4,290,000 in the first, 4,441,000 in the second and 3,990,000 in the third hour.

**Tommy Dreamer suffered a gash on his forehead during The Shield attack backstage on Monday night and had to go the hospital to receive stitches in his forehead. Dreamer has posted pictures of the wound on his Twitter account. It would seem like an easy idea to have Dreamer return with some “friends” to put The Shield over at a future date.

**Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez at the Wrestling Observer website reported that Ric Flair has not signed a deal with the WWE at this time and Monday’s show was considered a guest appearance by Flair.

**Triple H and Bruno Sammartino were rumored to be meeting on Tuesday with the WWE in Pittsburgh for the television tapings. Hunter has made a big push to have Sammartino inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame next year at Madison Square Garden with Sammartino steadfast that he is not interested. If ever there is a year to do it it’s next year at MSG and would likely have a big nostalgia appeal for the New York market and capturing a generation of older wrestling fans that have likely moved on from the current product.

**The WWE sent out a press release promoting the success of the WWE app on Monday during the Slammy Awards with 151,000 downloads of the app on Monday along with 583,000 votes during the Slammy Awards with a total of over 3-million downloads of the app since it launched. In their release they stated that the “Kiss of the Year” category received the most votes with 95,581 compared to Superstar of the Year (93,805), LOL Moment of the Year (81,131), Trending Now (74,386) and Match of the Year (70,568).

**Matt Hardy is scheduled for the Ring of Honor television tapings on January 5th in Baltimore, Maryland. Hardy is also scheduled for the ROH card on January 19th in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

**The Pro Wrestling Syndicate group is planning to hold two shows over WrestleMania weekend next year in Metuchen, New Jersey. Their first show on April 4th will feature Demolition taking on The Rock ‘n Roll Express and special guest “Superstar” Billy Graham attending the show. Their second night on April 5th will feature John Morrison working the show against La Parka with Bret Hart and Graham appearing at the show. The Hart appearance will be interesting depending on whether Hart is going to be used that weekend for the WWE Hall of Fame or any other capacities where the WWE tends to get exclusivity on their guys.

**The Ultimate Warrior is also going to be in town for WrestleMania weekend and will be doing an autograph signing on Sunday April 7th at 9am at WrestleCon in Seacaucus, New Jersey.

**Due to Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara being off the road for the house shows this week the WWE has added the New Age Outlaws to all of the Raw house shows. Both men are under contract to the company with Road Dogg working as a producer and Billy Gunn recently re-hired to be a trainer at FCW. The two have been going over Damien Sandow and Cody Rhodes all week long.

**Perhaps the most well remembered WCW pay-per-view of all-time took place on Dec 28th 1997 with Starrcade from the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. headlined by Hulk Hogan Vs Sting for the WCW Title. The show was the culmination of a 16-month build after Sting walked out on WCW and made his return at this event to challenge Hogan for the title and defend WCW and was the booking peak of the company at their hottest point in history up to this point in time. The show did 650,000 buys on pay-per-view and brought in $6,000,000 in revenue for the company.

**Michael Elgin has been added to the ECWA Super 8 tournament for Saturday April 13th in Newark, Delaware.

**The 20th anniversary of Raw on January 14th will take place in Houston, Texas. There has been zero mention yet on television if they are going to make a big deal out of this or not since it comes in such close proximity to this past July’s Raw 1000 but the company needs as many hooks as they can for these three-hour shows.

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